Strike Dog (2 page)

“No problem,” Linsenman said. “What do you want?”

“Home phone and her personal cell phone.” He gave his friend the numbers.

“I can do this by fax. What's the rationale for the affidavit?”

“Needed for an ongoing investigation.”

“The accident investigation is still open?”

“Just do it, okay?”

“Okay, drop them at your house or your office?”

“Slippery Creek.”

“Your house is in Gladstone.”

“I'm relocating.”

“Huh,” the deputy said. “I'll drop them out at the camp. Anything else?”

“I appreciate this,” Grady Service said.

3

GLADSTONE, MICHIGAN
APRIL 28, 2004

It was dark and Korea-born Candace McCants was inside Nantz's house on the Bluff overlooking Gladstone, rubbing the ears of Newf, Service's 154-pound Canary Island mastiff, a breed the Spaniards called
Presa Canario
. The dog had been given to him by his former girlfriend, veterinarian Kira Lehto. Before Newf, he had been deathly afraid of all dogs, any size, breed, or shape, but over time he and Newf had bonded in ways he never would have predicted.

McCants was a damn good CO, and a close friend. She got up, came over to Service, and put her arms around him. He was more than a foot taller. No words passed between them.

He pushed her away. He went up to the bedroom and came back minutes later with a bulging canvas hockey bag he often used as a suitcase.

“Grady?”

He turned and faced her. “Either help or get the fuck out of my way,” he said.

McCants didn't move. “You intimidate a lot of people, Grady, but I'm not one of them. What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Going back.”

“Going back to what?”

“Who I was before—”

“—Nantz civilized you.”

“Yeah, that worked out,” he said bitterly.

“Put down the freaking bag.”

He stared at her.

She took a deep breath. “You're not thinking. You're doing—hell, I don't know what's going through that twisted mind of yours, but you're not thinking. The Grady Service I respect thinks before he acts. He thinks about everyone and then he does the right thing.”

“I
am
doing the right thing,” he countered.

“Packing your stuff and running away?”

“Not running away,” he said. “I'm going to get it back.”

“It?”

“
It,
” he repeated.

“And who's keeping
it
from you?”

“Me,” he said. “But not anymore.”

“What about the funeral? Have you made arrangements?”

“No funeral,” he said. “No memorial, no words at the grave, no nothing.”

“You haven't answered the question.”

“Cremation,” he said.

“Is that what she wanted, or what you decided?”

“What Nantz wanted,” he said. “Walter was too young to have an opinion.”

“Cremation and no memorial, no effort to come to grips with this, let us all grieve?”

He looked at her and showed a half-grin. “Oh, I am most definitely going to come to grips with it.”

“I?” McCants said. “You. What about the rest of us—all their friends, all of us who cared about Nantz and Walter?”

“You mourn your way and I'll mourn mine.”

“I thought you were growing up,” she snapped.

“I am,” he shot back.

“You are not making any sense, Service.”

He saw that McCants was on the verge of an emotional outburst and put his hands on her shoulders. “It wasn't an accident, Candi. Somebody ran them off the road and killed them.”

The younger officer's jaw hung open and she blinked.

“We all got a voice message from Chief O'Driscoll this morning. He said it was an accident.”

Service said, “It wasn't.”

McCants began to chew her bottom lip. “The whole world thinks it's an accident, but the great Grady Service knows better.”

He tapped his stomach. “Gut first, then evidence. When your gut twists into a braid, you can't ignore it. I won't,” he added with a glare. “Call the captain, ask him.”

McCants went to her truck, got her cell phone, and punched in the number as Service looked on.

“Captain, McCants here. I'm with Grady and he says it wasn't an accident. What's going on?”

Service watched as she nodded, her face impassive. She then flipped the phone shut. “He says you've been relieved of duty for now and that you are being irrational.”

He studied her eyes. “He said more, didn't he?”

“Yeah. He said you may be right, but that the Troops have to make that determination.”

He quickly talked her through what he knew, and when he had finished, she said, “Okay, you want to move back to your camp, you've got it. But if the investigation comes back as an accident, all this bullshit is done and you will sit down and do the things you are supposed to do in a way that will honor your woman and your son. Am I clear?”

“You always are,” he said, heading back to the house for another load.

They carried loads to his truck in silence until the bed of his personal pickup was nearly full. “What is this going to prove?” she finally asked.

“Somebody killed them,” he said.

“Maybe,” she corrected him.

“Maybe,” he echoed. “But if it was homicide, I plan to be in shape to do something about it, and I can't do that here.”

“You mean living in luxury,” she said, filling in the blank.

“Right. I got soft here—I lost my edge—and if somebody killed them, I'm sure it was to get at me.”

“Why do things always have to be about
you?
”

“They don't, but when they are and I don't focus, I'm asking for it.”

“Your logic scares me,” she said.

“It's not logic,” he said. “It's all gut.”

“So it's back to sleeping on footlockers in an unfinished camp in the woods.”

“It's finished,” he said in his own defense.

“Jesus, you big dumb bastard, it has four walls and some doors stacked around a toilet and a shower in the corner. It's not much more than a wall tent made of plywood and half-logs.”

“It works for me,” he said.

She followed him into the garage, where he began moving his free weights out to the truck, and she began to help.

“Maridly would want you to slow down and think,” she said again, trying to reason with him.

“What Mar would want is for me to find out who did this to her and Walter and to settle it.”

“Who hates you so much they'd kill your girlfriend and son? Allerdyce?”

Limpy Allerdyce was one of the state's most notorious poachers, and Service had once put him in jail for seven years for attempted murder. Allerdyce was the leader of a tribe of lawbreakers, mostly his relations, who lived like animals in the far southwestern reaches of Marquette County.

The clan killed bears and sold the galls and footpads to Korean brokers in Los Angeles for shipment to Korea and Taiwan. They killed dozens of deer each year, took thousands of fish, and got substantial money for their take from buyers in Chicago and Detroit. Despite a probable huge income, the tribe lived like savages. Since his release from Southern Michigan Prison in Jackson, Limpy had pretty much followed the law, and even claimed to have been a snitch for Service's father, who had been a CO of the old school. Since getting out of prison, Limpy had begun feeding information to Service. Allerdyce was a lot of things, most of them too vile to contemplate, but this wasn't his style. Limpy did things Yooper-style, head-on and toe to toe, and whatever the challenge, he fought his own battles.

“Not Limpy,” he said. “But whoever it is, they knew that Nantz and Walter were my vulnerabilities. Now they'll come after me.”

“Maybe they know they can't get you and they're settling for Nantz and Walter,” McCants offered.

“They'll come,” he said. “They'll come.”

“Tree called,” she said. “He's on his way north.”

Luticious Treebone and Service had finished college the same year, Service graduating from Northern Michigan University, where he had been only a fair student and a competent hockey player. Treebone had played football and baseball at Wayne State and graduated cum laude. They both had been on the verge of being drafted when they volunteered for the marines, met at Parris Island, and served together in the same unit in Vietnam. They had been through hell and rarely spoke of the war since. When they got out of the marines, they both joined the Michigan State Police, went through the academy in East Lansing with honors. When the opportunity came to transfer to Department of Natural Resources (DNR) law enforcement, both had made the move, but within a year, Treebone left the DNR for the Detroit Metropolitan Police, where he was now a much-decorated lieutenant in charge of vice. They had remained close friends since boot; each thought of the other as his brother.

Service grinned. “Good. Tree knows how payback works.”

“Listen to yourself! Payback? What kind of shit is that? You're a cop.”

“Somebody does your partner, you go after
them
.”

Later, while McCant's was outside with the dog, he went through last month's house telephone bills to see if there had been any unusual activity, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He also checked Nantz's personal cell phone bills. Apparently she called Walter's cell phone almost every day, which surprised him. He talked to his son perhaps once a week. There was also a number he didn't recognize that came up repeatedly, and out of desperation he dialed it.

“Hello?” a familiar voice answered. His son's girlfriend? Why the hell was Nantz calling her?

“Karylanne? I saw your number on Nantz's cell phone record and just thought I'd see who it was,” he explained clumsily.

“It's me,” she sighed. “Ah, when's the funeral?” she asked with a weak voice.

“I don't know yet,” he said. Not her goddamn business. “Nantz called you often,” he said.

“We were friends,” the girl said.

When the hell did they become friends? Jesus Christ, was he blind to everything?

“OK, thanks,” he said, and abruptly hung up.

He threw the records back in a drawer in Nantz's desk with disgust. What else could he check? He couldn't think of anything and felt even worse. You're supposed to be a detective, asshole, but you couldn't find a turd in a toilet. When the fuck would Linsenman bring the current records? He thought about going through Nantz's checkbook, but he wasn't sure where it was.

When McCants came back he was sitting alone in the kitchen looking out at the gray water of Little Bay de Noc, and trying to force his brain to give him something to work with, a place to start. Anything.

4

SLIPPERY CREEK, MICHIGAN
MAY 1, 2004

Luticious Treebone and Service sat on the porch of the cabin. “The whole woods cop clan is going to close ranks around you,” Tree told him.

Service took him through the facts as he knew them, and Treebone listened without interrupting until his friend had finished.

“I've seen your gut in action,” Tree said. “What do you need from me?”

“Just keep people off my tail while I get myself ready.”

“Kalina will be up tomorrow,” Treebone said. Tree had brought his duffel and a sleeping bag, declaring he'd be staying for two weeks, like it or not. He was under Kalina's orders, and no one defied his wife.

Kalina Treebone had been named for the great Detroit Tiger Al Kaline, but where Kaline had been humble throughout his Hall of Fame career, she was outspoken, resolute in her beliefs, and intimidating to her husband and most of his friends.

Three days had passed since Service had seen the wreck. The captain drove out from Marquette and said that the state felt 70 percent certain it had been an accident, but they were not going to declare it so until they had ruled out other possibilities. Service was not happy with the news, but it didn't change his mind about what he had to do, which was to get himself into top shape by living a spartan existence, with as few distractions as possible.

Each morning and afternoon he lifted weights. In between he ran six miles down Slippery Creek and into the Mosquito Wilderness Area, which he considered to be one of the state's natural jewels. Before Nantz, the Mosquito had been his one true love, and he had guarded it with the tenacity of his father before him. An unexpected promotion to detective in the Wildlife Resources Protection unit removed him from the Mosquito, and it had become Candi's. So far she had been as fierce in protecting it as he had been.

Two hours after the captain left, Kalina Treebone arrived toting an enormous cooler filled with food and sent Tree to her van for two more coolers.

“You two aren't going to be eating cold beans from a can if I can help it.”

Tree and Service hoisted the coolers into the cabin. Kalina confronted Service, one hand on her hip and the other waving like a flick-knife. “You've always been a selfish, self-absorbed man,” she said. “Just like my Tree. Why any woman would want either of you is beyond me. What you need to be doing is getting your woman and your son properly buried and prayed over. Until then there ain't nothing else matters.”

“They're dead,” he said coldly, “and nothing can change that. What I have to do is deal with the things I can deal with. The state has ordered autopsies and I can't do a damn thing until they release them, so if you don't mind, put your finger back in its holster and let me get on with what I've got to do.” He was sick of being hugged, advised, and lectured about what he ought to be doing, and he was fed up with hangdog faces and pathetic sighs. He didn't need sympathy; he needed space. Why couldn't they understand that? Couldn't they see or sense that whatever this was—and he wasn't in any position yet to describe it—it was just starting, not ending.

He knew she didn't buy it, but Kalina was like her husband, the sort who would do what a friend needed, even when they didn't agree.

Kalina manned the phone, which kept ringing with sympathy calls. Ever since he'd arrived, the cabin had been overflowing with a stream of friends, bearing food and cringing sympathy, most of them at a loss for exactly what to say. His friends and fellow woods cops came one after the other. Gus Turnage, CO from Houghton County, and a fly-fishing friend, arrived just after Treebone. Gus hugged him but had little to say. He had lost his own wife many years back, raised three sons on his own. He had never remarried.

Their friend Yalmer “Shark” Wetelainen and his wife, Limey Pyykkonen, came in the next morning, followed by Simon del Olmo, the Cuba-born army vet, and his girlfriend and conservation officer, Elza “Sheena” Grinda. Lars and Joan Hjalmquist came over from Ironwood; Wink Rector, the resident FBI agent for the U.P., drove down from Marquette; and DaWayne Kota, the tribal game warden from Bay Mills, also showed up. Last to arrive were the giant CO Bryan Jefferies from Luce County, and Gutpile Moody, and his young girlfriend, Kate, also an officer and close friend of Nantz's. Moody and Nordquist lived together in nearby Schoolcraft County.

Vince Vilardo and Rose came up from Escanaba. Vince was the retired medical examiner for Delta County, and a longtime friend.

Linsenman showed up with an envelope and handed it to him, and Service took it to the side and opened it and scanned May's phone records. They looked like last month's, mostly calls to him, Walter, and Karylanne. She had called Walter the day before the accident, but not Karylanne. Nothing there. Shit! He stuffed the records back in the envelope and threw it in a cardboard box in a corner.

Lieutenant Lisette McKower and her husband drove in from Newberry. McKower was five-five, 120, with short brown hair, a long neck, and the tiny hands of a doll. Service met her for the first time when she had been sent to him as a rookie to train. He thought they had sent him a cheerleader, but she had been twenty-four, had three summers under her belt as a smokejumper out of Montana, and turned out to be as tough as moosehide. She'd risen through the ranks and Service was proud of her, though he'd never have admitted it.

“I'm sorry for our loss, Grady. Hear that? Ours, not just yours.”

Nantz was to have entered the DNR academy this fall.

“I talked to the captain,” McKower said. “He told me what you found at the auto-body shop.”

Service nodded.

“The evidence doesn't prove anything,” she said. “Are you prepared to deal with it if it's ruled an accident?”

“It wasn't an accident,” he said.

She sighed. “You always see the world in black and white, Grady. Remember, the Chinese say black has five colors and the Ojibwa have fourteen words for snow, including several colors other than white.”

He didn't respond. She was one of those people who was pathologically rational, a woman who overrode intuition with pure intellectual power and had risen because of it. But she had also been a smokejumper and had considerable fire inside. Even if she wouldn't admit it, she understood the call to vengeance.

“I know you, Grady; you only
think
you know me,” she said. “You classify me according to what's convenient for you. If this is not an accident, that does not mean it is automatically a homicide. There are shades, Grady, and there is a system and a process, and we are sworn to uphold both. We both know that the system and the process are no more than social algorithms, not final arbiters of right and wrong; they are only methods we use to determine guilty or not guilty, which has nothing to do with morality. Vengeance is not part of the system or the process,” she concluded, looking directly into his eyes. “I know you will do the right thing,” she said. “The captain says we are to assume this is an accident until the Troops issue a formal report to the contrary.”

“Nice speech. It won't be me talking about it,” he said.

“Not you talking, period,” she said.

“Never been much good at it,” he said.

“Nantz made you better,” McKower said. “We don't want any backsliding.”

“Is that the departmental ‘we'?”

“That's the personal we, you big hardhead—me, and all your friends.”

It seemed like half of Michigan Tech's hockey team trooped in the second morning, led by Walter's girlfriend, Karylanne Pengelly. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen, but she walked with her head up in a gesture of pride and resolve that caught Service's attention and choked him up for a moment.

His son had been in his first year at Michigan Tech and was working out and practicing with the team. Next year he would have been on scholarship. Not now. The Tech players mumbled as they shook his hand, and he understood. Elite young hockey players were like all young jocks. They hated ­dealing with injuries and death. Athletics was about feeling invincible, and when one of their own went down, it caused most of them to pull away so that they didn't have to face the reality or their own potential vulnerability. He ­couldn't blame them. He had been there once, had been a player who could have signed a pro contract if he'd wanted, but he had chosen the marines and gone to Vietnam instead of the NHL. It was a decision he'd never regretted, though it had been a hard, often nasty road from then to now.

He held Karylanne and felt her sob, but he had no words to soothe himself, much less her. All he could do was prepare to act. Why couldn't they all understand this?

That morning he had gotten a visit from the past.

The silver-haired man who walked into his cabin was tall and straight-backed with a weather-beaten face, accompanied by a small, gray-haired woman who was stunningly beautiful. “Grady, Bowie Rhodes,” the man said.

Service said, “We're all getting gray.”

Rhodes smiled. Service had met him when Rhodes was a UPI reporter in Vietnam. He and Tree had watched him trying to fish in a rice paddy that was actually a minefield, and they had helped get him safely out. They had known each other for decades, though they seldom got to see each other. Rhodes had a job that was the envy of fishermen: He wrote a column for an outdoor magazine and traveled around the country doing nothing but fishing.

Tree came over and embraced Rhodes. “What it is, bro.” They dapped in the elaborate Vietnam style and laughed, like the kids they had once been.

Service went outside with Rhodes. “I'm not much for giving advice,” the old reporter said, “but I've been through this one.”

“Ingrid,” Service said. Ingrid Cashdollar had been Bowie's first wife. She had been a deputy in Luce County and Service had known her. She had been beautiful, funny, and an effective cop, and when she died it had affected a whole county, not just her husband. Since then Bowie had remarried and seemed happy with Janey.

“What you have to do is keep your mouth shut and let people do and say whatever they need to get out their feelings. The funny thing is that when a wife dies, everyone is concerned about everything except the husband.”

“We weren't married.”

Rhodes smiled. “Yeah, like paper matters.” He fished in his pocket and held out a key. “When all the company clears away, you need to go off somewhere and be totally alone for a while. That key opens the door to a camp I have in west Chippewa County. You have to come in through Fiborn and drive ten miles up a two-track. There's a coded lock on the gate. What was your last day in Vietnam?”

“December 19,” Service said. “1969.”

“Okay, the lock will be coded 1219, and you have the key to the camp. There's no well or running water, and no electricity. There's heat from propane and kerosene lamps—very old-style, unheated outhouse included. The camp sits at the end of a finger in a huge swamp. Go when you want, stay as long as you need, and take in your own water. You remember Ironhead Beaudoin?”

Beaudoin had been a contemporary of his father's, also a conservation offi­cer. “Out of Trout Lake, right?”

Rhodes nodded. “He was a pistol. He tracked a poacher named ­Carvo­lino for years. The camp is built where the old poacher's stand sat. Carvolino used Indian pulpies to haul in timber and built a cabin on state land in the swamp. Beaudoin didn't find it until after Carvolino died, and when it got logged and came up for sale, he bought it. After Ironhead passed, I bought it from his daughter.”

The name Carvolino seemed familiar. “He the one—”

Rhodes interrupted him by nodding, opening his mouth and pointing a finger inside. “Carvolino used to sell buck racks to downstate sports in bars in Moran and Brevort and Trout Lake and Ozark and St. Ignace. He was a major lush, but he knew his way in the woods. Ran traplines. Come deer season he'd park his car somewhere for two weeks, walk into his hunting ground in a roundabout way, and stay until the season was over. He'd ship out the meat and racks using a sidecar that the Indians used to go back and forth to town. Beaudoin never could catch him. Just after deer season, Beaudoin's last before he retired, Carvolino and his wife had separated and he was drinking like a fish. He called her at the phone company in Iggy one morning and begged her to come back and give him another chance, but she was fed up and refused, and he said, ‘Okay, then listen to this.' He put the shotgun in his mouth and squeezed it off. I think it broke Beaudoin's heart that he never pinched the guy.”

Rhodes told a good yarn, and had a conservation officer's appreciation for stories.

“I'm serious, Grady—use the camp. And trust me: Over time, the pain will be replaced by scar tissue, which will thicken. It will never completely cover the wound, but it will make life tolerable.”

That night there were twenty or thirty officers and friends in the cabin, but Grady Service was alone in the dark, several hundred yards away on a ridge, and when he began firing his pistol at a paper target he had tacked to a tree, several woods cops appeared, their 40-caliber SIG Sauers in hand, ready to rock and roll.